By Paul E. Schindler Jr.

Some things are impossible to know, but it is impossible to know these things.

I no longer have a day job. I'm retired! So every word of this is my opinion, This offer IS void in Wisconsin. Except, of course, that some material in this column comes from incoming e-mail; such material is usually reproduced indented and in a serif typeface to distinguish it from the (somewhat) original material.

Wholesale vs. Retail Politics: Real World Edition

I don’t like mentioning the name of the GOP candidate, but if you’re interested you can listen to a discussion between Leon Neyfakh and Sasha Issenberg about his campaign, or rather, lack thereof.

It struck me because I am, for the most part, a huge fan of Scott Adams, the cartoonist behind Dilbert. He did a corporate gig at my former employer while he was still working a day job at Pacific Telephone, and he was brilliant. His comic strip is brilliant. His books are thought-provoking. And brilliant. For the last year, he’s been using his blog to tell anyone who will listen that the GOP candidate is a master persuader (just like Adams) and will win the general election in a landslide. It scares me because Adams is a genius.

But.

Sasha Issenberg, author of Victory Lab, The Secret Science of Winning Campaigns, makes some strong points in the podcast linked above. Specifically, U.S. general elections aren’t about persuasion they are about turnout. Adams says the GOP candidate will change all the rules and romp to victory. Issenberg wasn’t arguing directly with Adams, but noted that the Republican has 30 people in his field operation, while Clinton has 700.

What difference does that make? Clinton is preparing to mount a field operation to get out the vote. The man with the spray tan has eschewed such things as data-driven campaigning and get out the vote. He says he doesn’t need them.

Issenberg also noted that, in today’s hyper partisan political environment, only about 8 to 10% of the voters are actually persuadable. The rest of the voters make up their minds based on party affiliation and are immune to persuasion, or facts for that matter. Plus, he noted, if you have a get out the vote effort that is not done properly you will be getting out the vote for your opponent. Which is worse than no get out the vote effort at all.

Even if Adams is right, and Mr. Funnyhair persuades vast swaths of low-information, seldom-voting Americans to prefer him, it is useless if they don’t turn out at the polls. Again, this is the downside of wholesale politics versus retail (see article above). The candidate is not going to conclude each speech with, “Here are the deadlines to register to vote in all 50 states, and the hours the polls are open. Then I will read you a list of all 185,000 polling places. Listen for yours.”

Here are the numbers:

Voter Registration Statistics

Data

Total number of Americans eligible to vote

218,959,000

Total number of Americans registered to vote

146,311,000

Total number of Americans who voted in the 2012 Presidential election

126,144,000

Percent of Americans who voted in the 2012 Presidential election

57.5 %

Now, Ronald Reagan believed facts were stupid things (I have never believed that was a slip of the tongue), but facts are facts. A wholesale campaign, dependent on rallies of thousands and TV coverage of millions will reach 218 million people, of whom a third cannot vote. And 14% of those who can vote, won’t.

Do you even know where your polling place is? I don’t, but I know how to look it up, and I care enough to take the time to do so. In the Republican primary, the candidate was speaking to the fired-up and the converted. In the general election—not so much. All of his new fired-up independent and nominally Democratic voters may find, on election day, that they aren’t registered, don’t know the polling hours and can’t find their precinct. Election day isn’t even a holiday in the U.S., so some people have to take time off from work to vote. And some people can’t or won’t do that, especially the high-school educated angry white men that form the candidate’s core constituency.

This issue is particularly ironic for a Republican (if he really is a Republican) since it is Republicans who have led the nationwide effort to make voting harder, through such tactics as eliminating early voting, reducing the number of precincts and making registration harder. They will surely succeed in suppressing the votes of poor and minority voters. Alas for them, they will also suppress the votes of unenthusiastic white votes as well.

To get people to vote, you need a ground game. Not only does he who must not be named have no ground game, he says he thinks he doesn’t need one.

Adams is probably right about the master persuader. A majority of Americans may come to believe the GOP candidate should be our next president. But he actually becomes president only if a majority of the people who actually vote think he should win. And for that matter, only if a majority of people in the right states who actually vote think he should win (because Electoral College).

And while Adams says everything is different now, I’m betting on human nature. People are lazy (I am sure Adams would agree), and tend to do what they are told or asked to do. Hillary Clinton’s thousands of volunteers (who will be recruited by her 700 and growing field staff) will ask millions of people to vote for her. Mr. Funnyhair won’t ask because he doesn’t think he needs to. We shall see if he is right.

Recent Movies

Paul's Reading

Ann Patchett: This Is the Story of a Happy MarriageDavid Sedaris liked this book so much her arranged for Moe's Books of Berkeley to sell it in the lobby after his reading at Zellernbach Hall last year. I can see why; Pratchett is an interesting and able essayist. I haven't read her fiction, but if it is as good as her essays, it is good indeed. As a recently bereaved cat owner, I couldn't read her essay on the death of her dog, but all the others were fine. (*****)

Nora Ephron: The Most of Nora EphronI have always been a big fan of Nora Ephron, so I was enraptured with this omnibus, which includes her novel, her Harry met Sally screenplay and many of her essays, some of them previously uncorrected. They say you should never meet the authors you love, but I think I'd have enjoyed her, even if she was telling me to "get over it." (*****)

Edward St. Aubyn: Lost for Words: A NovelI heard the author on "Fresh Air" being interviewed by Terry Gross, and I am glad I did. I don't think I'd enjoy the Patrick Melrose books for which he is famous (based on the descriptions, I don't care to read them) but this relentlessly amusing sendup of the literary prize culture in Britain has laughs on every page, delivered with standard British panache. (*****)

Terry Pratchett's Discworld Books: Terry Pratchett has written 40 books about Discworld. I have read just over half of them, most recently Equal Rites. Everyone of them is hysterically funny and also makes a few comments about the world around us. His 2000 novel "The Truth" is one of the best journalism books ever written. He is a genius. (*****)

Dave Eggers: The Circle (Vintage)Finally, a novel of Silicon Valley with some literary merit. I have looked at the book club discussion questions, which make it clear to me that there's a whole lot going on I didn't get. But the parts I did get were a fascinating exploration of where we're going. As I used to teach students, "Science Fiction is not about what it is about, it is about the time in which it was written." True here. Marvelous and gripping. (*****)

Bob Garfield: BedfellowsCo-host of NPR's "On the Media" and Slate's "Lexicon Valley," Bob Garfield is a quick-witted, sharp-tongued commentator. This novel of the modern mafia in fictional Brooklyn is humorous and amusing (albeit not really laugh-out-loud funny), with a clever yet somehow contrived plot. Lots of swearing, not too much violence. I have read several books on my Sony E-reader; this is the first book I read on the Kindle I-phone ap. Weird experience. If you'd told me I'd ever read a book on my phone... (****)

Maria Semple: Where'd You Go, Bernadette: A NovelAnother case where "everybody" was right. All my print and electronic media sources pointed to this as a brilliant comic novel. Clearly, my analytical skills are deficient when it comes to print, because I can only repeat what I have written about several other books here: couldn't put it down. A mother-daughter tale, told mostly through documents and emails, and a delightfully barbed skewering of Seattle, one of America's most obvious and under-skewered targets. (*****)

Lionel Shriver: The New Republic: A NovelI am always on the outlook for the next "best journalism novel ever." For decades, Evelyn Waugh's Scoop was the gold standard, and it is still the funniest of the small handful of iconic novels that tell the truth about the life of journalists, particularly foreign correspondents. This, however, is a clever, well-written page turner that shows journos living the life I knew them to live when I was one decades ago. Plot contrivances? Sure. It was written before 9/11 and released this year, and if you didn't know you might guess. But just as Waugh's work caught the essence of the working journalist of his time, so too does this first rate novel. It deserves a place in the pantheon of "best journalism novels ever. (*****)

Danny Rubin: How To Write Groundhog DayRegular readers know I am a sucker for all things groundhog. Still, above and beyond my fan-boy inclinations, this is a great book by a talented author, which provides insight into both the movie and the process of writing it. I literally couldn't put it down. I wrote my second-ever Amazon review to praise it. Run, don't walk to buy a copy. (*****)